We can celebrate startup culture, rate and award the most promising ideas, businessess and teams, but which startups make it to the next level: the growth phase? Thanks to Deloitte Fast Growing 500 EMEA ranking, released last week, we know.

Before I dig into the data, here are some interesting facts:

France leads the table, with 93 entries in the top 500, followed by the UK (86), Sweden(54), Netherlands(53) and Norway(48). Germany has only 23 entries.

#Estonianmafia is conspicuously absent from the list, while eastern Europe has 39 entries (Russia and CEE).

The top fastest growing UK companies in Internet segment have never been reviewed by TechCrunch. These are Leadpoint (lead generation in financial services industry), Ratedpeople (linking home owners with rated tradesmen) and PKR (online Poker game).

Top two fastest growing companies from eastern Europe are at least 10 years old.

While none of the eastern European companies made it to top 10, the closest runner up ER-Telecom fromRussia at number 11, provides broadband, cable and online TV services acros sRussia. The company has 3.5 million subscribers across 42 cities. It started off in 2001, and got a first push at Venture Fair 2003 in Perm (I attended but was too busy looking at military technologies as VCs were investing in Homeland Security startups then). At this provincial venture fair the company raised first investment to build cable and internet network for 200 000 homes inPerm. Now it occupies 20 per cent of the market segment in Russia.

Romanian Vola.ro Student Adventure SRL (rank 13) offers low cost travel deals. The flights can be booked for travelers outside of Romania too, but I am not sure the price will be as attractive as elsewhere (I checked a sample trip from Germany to Finland, but the price was about 80 per cent higher than what I got when booking from a German online shop). Provided that not everyone in Romania can pay for their trip online, the company offers offline payment mechanism. It was founded in 2000.

Czech LiveSport (information, entertainment and betting for sports fans) is on the position 17, and Internet Shop s.r.o. (rank 24) sells perfume and makeup online in Czech Republic.

Below is the list of eastern European companies which made it to the top 500. The full list of companies can be found on Deloitte website.

And if you must know, the fastest growing company in EMEA is Turkish Logic Bilişim, which grew at almost 29 000 per cent this year, offers bread-and-butter telephony services.

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Natasha Starkell

TwitterLinkedInFacebook Google+ Natasha Starkell is the founder and CEO of GoalEurope, advisory firm focusing on technology investment and software development in Russia and Eastern Europe. Prior to starting GoalEurope she has worked in the field of finance, mergers and acquisitions, corporate strategy and offshore outsourcing at Unisys Corporation in Switzerland and United Kingdom. She has an MBA degree from London Business School. She speaks Russian, English and German. She lives in Northern Germany.